Easter Vigil, St. Alfred's

 

Easter Vigil 2024 

Dale Hathaway 

March 30, 2024

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Opening

When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child. When I was a child I experienced Easter pretty much like Fr. Peter shared last Sunday. There was Palm Sunday, with the pomp and procession. Then there was Easter.

When I was a child, I knew my name and I knew that my parents were Helen and Dale. I tolerated my siblings for the most part.

It was only later that I began to realize that one of the great challenges of life was to figure who I really was and who I was meant to be. And it was later still that I began to grasp that it wasn't even about me. I was a part of a larger story.

I was in my 20's when I experienced my first Easter Vigil. We didn't have such a thing when I was a child in the church. I returned to the church, trying to be an adult, and trying to figure out what an adult faith looks like.

I'm still working at that.

I know of no better expression of what adult Christianity is all about than the Easter Vigil.

That first Easter Vigil was for me the first of many that would follow -- up to the present moment. I have come to experience this liturgy as the fullest possible expression of who we are as Christians, as human beings, as children of God. Through the years what we do here tonight has often taken my breath away.

Lighting Fire

The Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii was in a continuous eruption from 1983 until 2018. Before we left the islands we had an opportunity to see the eruption at work. We left at dusk on a small ocean-going boat that took us down the coast. As the sun set, the waves that bounced us around were filled with sparkling lights flashing in the water as it splashed against the boat. Our daughter Amy was gleeful because it was like a roller coaster ride.

Finally we began to approach the point where the lava was flowing into the water. It was a dark night. There was a snake trail of red-orange coming down the slope, while several sites along the rocky edge had molten water falls into the surf below. We could feel the heat. What I also felt was awe!

It felt to me like I was entering the dawn of creation. I was somehow present as God was in the act of creating the universe. I felt like I knew whose I was. I somehow belonged to the God of creation.

With this festival of light that we experience on this night, we are called to recognize our kinship with a God of fire and of worlds begotten. But it is not only a creating God, but a God, who gives up himself or herself in a consuming fire.

Fr. Keating has a passage where he sees the light of the paschal candle as a symbol of the profound love that originates in God's own love. It begins with a single point. The fire is lit and then the paschal candle is lit. All the rest of the light that fills a church full of hand candles – it all originates in the one flame. As the light of God's love is spread and flourishes, the original flame does not diminish.¹

Annie Dillard relates a similar awesome image of fire, but this one an intimate picture.

One night she was quietly soaking in the wonders of the creation about her and she saw a moth fly into a candle flame. The moth was caught by the fire, consumed and held. Its wings were immediately ignited like tissue paper, and in an instant they were gone. Most of the moth was quickly consumed, except that there was a shell , a skeleton, there in the bit of the flame. "And that skeleton began to act as a wick. The wax rose in the moth body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole, where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk." ²

This night calls us into relationship with a God who gives all that there is in the divine in order to be in relation to this humble world. The fire calls us each by name and gives us the name of our family. It is the family named Christian.

Exsultet

At the time of Passover in a Jewish household, a sacred meal is held. It’s called a Seder. One of the highlights of that meal is a question that is asked by a child. The child asks, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" When I have lead Seder meals in the past, I have taken particular delight in responding to that question. I say, "I am so glad you asked me that question because that is exactly what I wanted to share tonight.

The answer is the story of the deliverance of Israel from bondage. The answer is our deliverance from bondage. The answer is the powerful answer to, "Who are we? Whose are we?"

That is the story that we share tonight. It is the story of the deliverance of all people from bondage. We hear it put this way in the Exsultet:

this is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

The Exsultet we heard sung tonight – and all the best stories are sung -- says in vivid yet mystical language why this night is like no other.

Holy is this night when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away.

This song takes us back to the very origins of human life. This song announces that this is a sacred night. This song announces that tonight we proclaim what it means to be Christian. This song announces for all the world to hear, who we are, and whose we are.

Sacred Story

We have announced then that this is the most important message there is. The story we tell tonight is the most important story there is.

There is space in the liturgy tonight to tell all the fullness of the path from creation to the fulfillment brought about by the resurrection. From the great need for redemption, experienced by our ancient ancestors, and by us on a day-to-day basis, through to the "peace that passes all understanding." Tracing the story up through the prophets, and finally Jesus rising from the dead and sending us the adventures of a new life in anticipation of the final fulfillment.

A woman named Gretchen Pritchard has been telling the sacred story aimed at Episcopalians, especially young Episcopalians, for several decades. I was gifted many years ago with a transcript of her version of the entire Bible told in language appropriate for children . It begins, "Once upon a time". End it ends with, "the prince and princess get married, and live happily ever after". Amazingly, that is a pretty good approximation of the first chapter of Genesis, and the last chapter of the book of Revelation.

At a number of Easter Vigils that I have officiated through the years, we have read that text from Gretchen Pritchard. It is poignant because it helps us keep the very large perspective that this night gives us.

This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.

We are here tonight in Florida in the year of our Lord 2024. But this night takes us back through the millennia to every deliverance experienced by humankind. We are there as well tonight. How holy is this night. - # Baptism

By very ancient custom, this is the night that is most appropriate for baptisms. The baptism of stepping into the pool of water, having shed the clothing of an old life, and emerging, dripping, from the pool, into the new life and new clothes of life in Christ. Our life as Christians begins with that ancient movement.

It is often quoted that we are an Easter people. We are a people who are made out of the consequences of Jesus's Resurrection. We are a people, not just individuals, but a family with the name of Christian. By tradition, baptism was a time when we received a name. Who we are. At the same time we gained a family. Whose we are. Baptism shows us that we are God's people.

Eucharist

I heard a kind of parable many many years ago that told the story of how orthodox Christians understand the basic sacraments of our life as Christians. It was said that when a child is born, there are three basic actions one must take for the sake of the child:

1. first, the child is washed, wrapped in clothes, and given a name.
2. second, the child is fed.
3. third, the child is sheltered and given a home.

These three actions correspond it was said with - baptism, - Eucharist and - confirmation.

Washed in the waters of new life. Fed with the bread of life. And sheltered by the gift of the Spirit.

In the orthodox tradition, all three of those things happen at the same time. So tonight, we hear the sacred story, we see and hear how baptism is the basic calling for all of us, and we are nourished in the sacred body and blood of Christ.

Closing

This liturgy is the first Eucharist of Easter. This liturgy is the third part of one continuous service lasting from Thursday to Saturday night. There are no dismissals after the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. What we do here tonight tells a very big story, the biggest of all. It spans the final meal of Jesus with his disciples, the trial and passion of our Lord, and his emergence from the tomb. This night tells the whole story of what it means to be Christian.

Tonight we travel from the dawn of creation: Fire. Through the waters of deliverance: Water. Through to the dawn of a new life in the People of God: Eucharist. This night is truly like no other night.

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1. The daily reader for contemplative living March 21 & 22↩

2. Holy the Firm p. 17↩

Lent 2 2024 -- St. Alfred's

 

Opening

We have entered into another season of Lent. For most of us it is not the first time we've "done Lent". We have followed this cycle year-by-year through the patterns of our lives. If we were to tell the narrative of the Lents that we have kept, we might get a facisimile of the history of our call to life in Christ. At some point we made a decision to follow Christ. At some point we recognized that to be a disciple of Christ it was going to mean molding and fashioning our life to conform to Christ's own life. The cycles of Lent tell something of the story of our call to life in Christ.

It's not linear. It's not a straight line or even multiple ones. There are cycles within cycles. My own life has been marked not just by keeping Lent but by attempting to preach on these lessons year-by-year, Lent by Lent. It is perhaps my task of preaching Lent -- preaching it over and over again -- that leads me to think of the big picture. These well-known passages come around year by year, again and again.

Most of you are aware that the lessons we follow on Sundays focus on one of the 3 synoptic gospels each cycle. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel of John is interspersed throughout the 3 years.

Now, within the annual cycle there are smaller cycles.

The Epiphany cycle, which we just concluded, presents us with a snapshot of Jesus' ministry, beginning with his baptism and ending with his Transfiguration. Like our own call to ministry, Jesus's ministry is launched with his baptism.

At the end of Epiphany, we recount Jesus's Transfiguration. It is the point at which the 3 synoptic gospels pivot and focus on Jesus's final journey to his Passion, culminating in the Resurrection. So for us in our journey in the church year we move from the Epiphany cycle to the Lenten cycle, the one that culminates in Easter.

Lent has begun. The cycle of 6 1/2 weeks that might be read as a slow-walk meditation on the way of the cross. It culminates in the Passion. And then -- Easter.

The time that follows Easter, The Easter cycle, lasts 50 days until Pentecost. It explores the meaning and implications of the Resurrection, for the disciples and followers of Jesus in the New Testament, and in the lives of Jesus' followers today – you and me.

Then, after Easter, there is a final cycle, the cycle of weeks from Pentecost until the next Advent. During this season the fullness of life in Christ is explored, with multiple themes and multiple emphases, as the whole task of following Jesus become an interwoven pattern of a cycle within a cycle with a cycle.

We hear these stories over and over again. And we know how each one goes. We know the story. What changes is who we are, how we have changed from last year, and what we make of it.

Sacred time is circular

I have shared with some of you how I can tell when we've had a good liturgy. It's when I can truthfully say, "I'm glad I came." If I can truthfully say, "I'm glad I came", then it's been time well-spent.

Now time is an interesting concept, one that serious thinkers have thought about for thousands of years and still do to this day. There is time that is clock-wise sort of time. Minutes turn into hours and hours into days. The ticking of the clock. That's secular time. It's linear. But then there is sacred time. In contrast to linear time, sacred time is generally circular. It doesn't generally function with a beginning and an ending, but rather flows from beginning to ending and then back again to the beginning. Our church year follows that sort of pattern.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.¹

One Easter vigil I presided over many years ago lasted for over 2 hours. It was full. There was the of lighting fire. There was a full telling of the sacred story in the Bible. There were baptisms of children and adults in a tub of water where you had to get wet. There was an anointing you could see, fit for a king. There was Eucharist where one felt as if you were at a sacred meal.

Afterward, one of the people in attendance, I think it was a visitor, came up to me and said, "When we got to the end I couldn't believe it was over." For that person it was time well spent. Sacred time isn't measured by a clock.

Life in Christ

The sacred time of our liturgy has the power to bring us face to face with what was time present many centuries ago. Our liturgy brings us face to face with Abraham, Paul, and Jesus. As we enter this cycle of Lent, the liturgy presents us with utterly iconic scenes from the prophets and the evangelists. It has the potential to make us present with them in sacred time.

Abram faced such a new and sacred reality in the passage from Genesis we heard today. He was 99 years old and the LORD showed up at his doorstep and announced a covenant with him. His life changed with new requirements and – as a sign of the changed life – a new name. Sacred time has the potential to bring us into the presence of God and to so transform us that we are as new people.

The evangelist today relates a teaching moment in Jesus's life: "the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, ..." He's talking to disciples – those who regard themselves as wanting to follow Jesus. That would be you and me as well as Peter, James, Thaddeus and the rest. It has the potential to confront us with the reality that our life in Christ is about suffering, and rejection, death, and then ultimately resurrection.

We hear these narratives over and over again. We know how they begin and we know the end. That's not the challenge of them. The challenge for us is to open ourselves to that sacred time where we are transformed. It is not a one-off experience.

My own life experience suggests that each day I enter a new set of challenges to being a disciple of Christ. Each day I have to start at the beginning and go to the end. But sometimes I can actually hear Jesus say to me, "Follow me." Each time we meet these texts we are different from the last time. Whether it's day by day or week by week, I am in need of continual renewal, I must be called again and again to life in Christ. Such is the power of sacred time. We are able to hear the voice of the Lord in sacred time.

Lent aims us squarely at the Passion of the Lord and the 3rd day reversal of the Resurrection. Lent pursues the implications of following Jesus to the cross. We hear Jesus tell us that directly in today's reading:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Peter voices an initial resistance to doing such a thing. We can easily voice the same thing. "Jesus, you don't really mean that, do you?"

Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

This being a follower of Jesus thing we are called to is the way of suffering.

Suffering

Suffering there is bound to be for Peter and the disciples. Bound to be because suffering is pretty much a universal experience. Actually, I think it is universal. Everyone suffers. That was the beginning of Gautama Buddha's experience and it is the lynch-pin of the Buddhist way. When I would ask my religion classes full of 18 year olds, "Is it true that we all have had the experience of suffering?" I often get a kind of blank look from some of them, while others readily nodded their head, "Yes." I think the hesitation was probably because they had never really reflected on it. When I look out at you I don't doubt that you all know what I'm saying about suffering. It's around all of us.

Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus suffered (that's what the word "Passion", Latin patior, means in this context). And he invites us to "take up our cross to follow him." That's a part of what the invitation to keep a holy Lent is about, to focus our lives on the task at hand. To enter into the way of the passion of Jesus.

But suffering is not an attractive thing. It's not an inviting thing. Typically we want to avoid it. Look at Peter's response. What do we do with this invitation?

Does Jesus' suffering make it all ok for the rest of us? Does Jesus' suffering offer a kind of redemption to each of us in our own suffering? Where is the redeeming value of suffering – for us? For Jesus?

There are no simple responses. The suffering which is on our path one year may look very different the next. The suffering for some is very different from the suffering of another. Jesus is found in all of the suffering. He invites us to participate. We are invited in to life in Christ.

We know how Jesus's story ends. He invites us into that as well.

Our end is our beginning

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή.²

The way up and the way down are one and the same, said a Greek philosopher 500 years before Christ.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

We have entered into this Lent. We do know how the story ends. We've been here before. We will give our best shot at embracing the way of the cross. We will fail. And we will meet the Risen Lord in glory. It will fade. And we will return next year to hear the story as if it were new. The sacred story goes on and on by going round and round.

We enter the sacred story. We have made a beginning of it. It's done. There's no undoing it. And in the end, as that poet and the mystic before him put it, "All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well."

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1. T.S. Eliot "Little Gidding"↩

2. Heraclitus ca. 500 bce↩

Sermon for Christmas Morning: St. Alfred's

title: Sermon for Christmas morning
subtitle: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway
author: St. Alfred's, Palm Harbor
date: December 25, 2023

Change. Christmas and our relationship to it.

When I was a child I thought like a child. I had dreams like a child. I related to Christmas like a child. When I became an adult I generally related to Christmas like I did when I was a child. I began to have children, and we wanted them to experience Christmas as we had known it. And then especially after I was ordained and had children at home on Christmas morning – children who were especially eager to get gifts unwrapped and surprises unsurprised, we had a rule that before Christmas morning Eucharist everyone could open just one gift – but their daddy had to celebrate the Eucharist so we at a light breakfast and off I went.

Now I'm an old man. Christmas feel different. I see the festivities as if looking on from a distance, and I wonder what happened to Christmas? And what is Christmas? The Christmas spirit? What's it all about?¹

Surely as we age we look on Christmas differently. What do we say when the children and grandchildren are all gone and far away and Christmas is all around us but the old ways don't work the way they used to? It turns out that …

Christmas itself wasn't always the way it is today or yesterday.

For the first two centuries, in the Church, there wasn't a December holiday called Christmas or anything else. There were non-Christian festivals. Fire festivals and prayers to the gods and goddesses. Of course there was the cycle of the sun in relation to the Earth. A relationship that we are newly aware of in the consciousness of global environmental change.

As Christianity became the formal religion of theRoman Empire, things began to change with Christmas. The old ways were stamped out while Christmas, i.e. the celebration of the birth of the Messiah, was implemented. There was a helpful emphasis on the newly decreed faith of the Church: Jesus was both God and Human.

Christmas fell in and out of favor over the years, but it became wildly popular in the 19th century because of the confluence of actions by songwriters, storytellers, state lawmakers, artists, and shopkeepers seeking profits. Come the 20th century and there emerges a Christmas as we now remember it. Traditions and customs that help to make the world go round.

But again I ask, what's it all about?

Nativity as metaphor

I wonder sometimes if it might not be just one giant metaphor. What if the story of the Christ child, born in a manger, with shepherds and kings about him, was a metaphor for an even bigger story? I may get in trouble when I tell you that I think that kind of gets at what it's all about. Christmas is about Incarnation. It is about great human longing and the response to that longing by a loving God.

Incarnation and Embodiment

At the heart of it is a story of a great need. Our needs are changing from youth to adult to old age. Our needs change as we age, but longing itself remains. We long:

• for love
• for hope
• for the ability to overcome evil
• for life in the face of the onslaught of aging and disease
• for well-being in a world that seems to honor avarice and selfishness

“The need is very great” – we can feel it in our bones. We can surely relate to it.

And God said, “I hear you. And I’m sending you Jesus – my beloved son.” -- Christmas – what brings us together today – is our celebration of the great remedy from God – the Incarnation.

The word means: embodiment, personification, epitome, impersonation, portrayal.

It means a turning one thing into another. A becoming. A new beginning.

A parable

Throughout his ministry Jesus told stories. There's something about stories. It seems that perhaps that's a little bit of What it's all about. A famous writer of the 19th century told a story. The story is about a king and a humble maiden.

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents.

And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in a poor village in his kingdom. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist-no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know for sure? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend to her. Clothed as a beggar, he approached her cottage with a worn cloak fluttering loose about him. This was not just a disguise – the king took on a totally new identity – He had renounced his throne to declare his love and to win hers.

A song

Jesus is somehow the perfect "embodiment" of God's response to our great needs. This most amazing truth has been proclaimed from the earliest days of the church. It is about somehow or other God's very self becoming human. One of us.

I took particular delight in a popular song of some years ago. It was titled "One of us" and sung by Joan Osborne. The opening stanza of the song is:

If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?

Then in masterful fashion, Osborne sings the line:

"What if God was one of us?"

I was amazed at the popularity of the song at the time. But even more amazed because the singer is asking one of the most profound Christian questions there is. "What if God was one of us?" Well, that is precisely what the Incarnation is all about. That is what happened. And what does it mean? For us, for the world?

God Himself / Herself is embodied in Jesus.

God who is beyond gender was manifest in a very real male person

God who loves and embraces all at all times, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, was embodied in a 1st c. Palestinian laborer

God became flesh. It is a most breath-taking proclamation.

"In-carnation"

It is a pregnant and rich concept. On this Christmas day soak it in and hold onto it. Incarnation. God's response to our great needs.

Think of these words:

"Incarnation" is about embodying. In its Christmas usage: at this festival we celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus -- which is to say, "In Jesus we now have the embodiment of God's very self."

Embodiment. Embodies. Jesus the embodiment of God. It connects a noun with a quality. Think of someone who "embodies" the things we long for. The things you need.

• love
• generosity
• self-sacrifice
• service to the least of God's children
• kindness
• gentleness
• gracefulness
• courage

God became flesh to embody those things. Meditate on these and then be them yourself. As Jesus embodies them for you, be that for the world around you.

The big story:

Our God is a great and mighty God. He loves to make things. He loves to love. He is willing to do whatever it takes.

We in this place and this time are the characters in God’s great story. We may be small and insignificant in the larger context of the universe, but we are the most important people right here and right now, for telling the story. Today we celebrate and remember the power and meaning of the Incarnation. And we give thanks. To God.

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1. Alfie (Song by Dionne Warwick)↩

All Saints: St. Alfred's, Nov. 5, 2023

Setting

Who makes saints

Someone asked me the other day who makes Saints? They had observed that some of the people in the church's calendar had "saint" in front of their name and some didn't. How do you get to be a saint? I'm a little surprised at myself that my first instinct was to describe the different ways the Catholic Church and the Episcopal church make a saint. I gave a bureaucratic answer to what I think was a personal question.

Somehow All Saints Day is a very personal day.

There was one thing (Bishop) Scharf said two weeks ago that -- in the language of my youth --"blew me away." He pointed to how the Pharisees were asking one question and Jesus answered a different question. It's so important to listen for the right questions, isn't it. It wasn't just that it was an insight in how to understand that particular exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. It seemed to be a kind of commentary on the importance of really listening to one another. It seemed almost an explanation for conflict in our lives and our world.

There's are various processes for how one gets "saint" in front of their name. But is that why we're here today? Our congregation is made up of people from a wonderful variety of different church backgrounds. There is I think a wonderful menagerie of different expectations for what the feast of All Saints is about.

I was amazed at that variety when I dug a little bit into the different traditions related to this day. A day that the church has been observing since the 300s. What would it have been like for those Christians in the fourth century as they gathered to celebrate the Saints among them, the Saints who had gone before them, the Martyrs who had died for the sake of the faith that bound them together?

Great variety

Observances

The observance of this feast day for me personally goes back deep into my youth, because my mother -- at the time a recent convert to the Episcopal church -- was keen to distinguish between the holy day of November 1 and the secular day called Halloween. As I learned a little more about the church year in those days, probably leading up to my confirmation, I learned there was a day set aside on November 2 called All Souls Day. Obviously they're not the same thing. But related. Later in my own life I was interested in the different approach to these holidays brought to us by the Day of the Dead -- dios de muerte. Related but not the same.

I was especially impressed when I went to a Lutheran Church where my daughter was married some years ago. They had hanging from the ceiling, high above us, strips of paper containing the names of all the people who had ever been a member of the church. It was like a snow storm of all the saints of that church who had gone before and brought those present to where they were now. For some of us this day conjures up memories of this sort. We pray for them in a litany today.

How rich this day is in meaning and importance to our own lives.

Cloud of witnesses

One of the things that ties together the different elements of this feast day is our fundamental trust and faith in the way we are bound together with those who have gone before us. Every year on this holy day I hear echoed in my mind the words of Hebrews chapter 12:

So then, with endurance, let’s also run the race that is laid out in front of us, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us. Let’s throw off any extra baggage, get rid of the sin that trips us up, and fix our eyes on Jesus, faith’s pioneer and perfecter. He endured the cross, ignoring the shame, for the sake of the joy that was laid out in front of him, and sat down at the right side of God’s throne. (CEB Heb 12:1-2)

For myself, one of the foundations of my trust in the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us came in the form of a message from beyond Death. I was standing alone in an apartment about a month after my father died. I can still remember the scene. I was standing at the kitchen counter minding my own business. I'm not sure what I was doing. But I suddenly heard a voice. It was the voice of my father. And it said, "Don't worry. I'm all right."

One might easily claim that all sorts of things might have produced the sensation in my mind. But from the moment it happened it felt like a message for me from beyond the grave. It felt like a message from God, and left me convinced that what death brings is not dissolution and separation; those are the things that we see and feel. It left me with an unshakable conviction that what death brings is peace and connection with all things and the God who made it all.

All Saints Day is for me the clearest expression of that.

Ancient setting

Who are these saints who surround us? How does scripture portray them? In both Hebrew and then Greek the words for "saint" are in their root meaning having to do with set apart or separate. Saints are different and yet the same as you and I. On the one hand there is the sacred and on the other there is the ordinary. Holiness and sacredness are associated with God. And we are not God.¹

In the New Testament the word "saint" is applied to the followers of Jesus, the believers in Jesus as the Christ. So Paul addresses six of his letters to the Saints, ... of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus ... and so on. The saints in this usage are set apart from those who don't believe. Related to this is the word for Church which means those who are called out, ekklesia.

It turns out that the same concept of being "set apart" for God – "saint" "holy one" – is very like the word Jesus's chief opponents used about themselves. The meaning of the word "Pharisees" is those who are separate, those who are set apart. Set apart for God. Separate from ordinary society. Saint. Paul himself was a Pharisee and then referred to his fellow followers of Jesus as "the saints". Jesus certainly had his conflict with the Pharisees, but they had far more in common than what separated them.

All Saints is all about what binds us together, across the generations and across our differences.

Who am I? How become that?

Reverie as a teenager

On a regular basis when I was a teenager I would spend time in a kind of reverie thinking about the "great cloud of witnesses". I've never forgotten the wonder I felt. It wasn't just parents or grandparents as I understood it. It was all of my ancestors who made it so that I spoke and thought and dreamed in English and not in Swahili. They helped make me who I am for better and for worse, good and the bad, the weak and the strong.

Today I would call that meditating on all the saints, those who bind me together with those who have gone before and those who will come after.

When the bishop spoke to us two weeks ago he gave us a plan of action. He gave us a charge. He charged us with paying attention to the lives we were living because we are made in the image of God. Who we are is children of God. It sounded very much like a short quotation from Bp. Tutu, a quotation that has guided and inspired me for decades. "God has made us responsible for his reputation."

We are a part of that great cloud of witnesses and we bear responsibility for those who come after.

Baptism

Promises:

How ought we to fashion our lives so that we can take our place in the Communion of the Saints? We don't just get there by accident or automatically. What do we have to do or be? An excellent summary is found in the baptismal covenant. We heard it two weeks ago and we make those renewal of vows again today.

1. Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
2. Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
3. Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
4. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
5. Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Who are the saints in your life who have held out for you these ideals and have empowered you to live into them? Is it an aunt or uncle? Or a friend you met in a purely serendipitous way? Whoever they are, we celebrate those Saints today.

Gospel

Those baptismal promises from our Book of Common Prayer have only been around for 50 years or so, but the words of Jesus's Beatitudes have been with us from the beginning. They have been a model and guide for the kind of lives we're talking about today. They point to who we are and whose we are, as Bishop Sharf put it 2 weeks ago. We are children of God made in God's image and responsible for God's reputation.

Who?

Who are the saint or saints who have been models for you and for me of poor in spirit? Dorothy Day has been that for me.

Who are the ones who have shown you that the way out of grief and mourning is into peace and shalom? The martyred nuns in El Salvador? For me it is a woman who breathed her last breath and then finished with the biggest smile you can imagine.

Who are the ones who have guided you with the knowledge that the meek shall inherit the Earth? Takashi Nagai, A Japanese doctor injured during the bombing of Nagasaki, cared tirelessly for other victims and worked towards forgiveness and reconciliation through the establishment of a prayer house, the writing of a book and the planting of thousands of cherry trees to help reclaim the devastated landscape.

Who are the ones who have produced in you a hunger and thirst for righteousness? Sam Shoemaker and the countless anonymous leaders of AA groups throughout the world?

Who are the ones who have exemplified mercy? Mother Teresa? Or perhaps your grandmother?

Who are the peacemakers? Gandhi perhaps? One of them for me was the man who brought together in Raleigh, NC, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the local black woman who pestered the city council for justice for the black community.

Who are the martyrs who have shown you the way of life? Oscar Romero? A parishioner I had in the 1990's is one who helped to show me that way of life. She had founded a free medical clinic for Michigan City. As a part of that process she had lived with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. As she talked about that experience the "holiness" of it was palpable to me – gave me, as they say in Hawai'i – "chicken skin". She died of uterine cancer, still in her 30's. Way too young.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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1. What Does "Saints" Mean? Bible Definition and References↩

Proper 18a, Palm Harbor, FL

Proper 18a  
St. Alfred's Church   
The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway  
Sept. 9, 2023

Metaphor for Church

I remember a snippet from a sermon many years ago. I think it was probably in my teens. The preacher made reference to the way in which looking up at the roof of the church it looked like the ribbing of a ship. He said it's not by accident that that part of the church is called a nave. The nave of a church, from the Latin navis meaning "ship." We get our word navy.

Now of course Saint Alfred's doesn't have the appearance of a great sailing vessel of yesteryear, with planks and ribbing. You look up at our ceiling and it looks more like a bobbing teacup or some thing. In fact I guess looking up at the architecture in our church building it looks something like the basket that Moses was floating in down the Nile River. We heard that from the first chapter of Exodus two weeks ago.

Still, all in all, there you have it. The church is as if it was sailing on a journey – to somewhere.

Church on pilgrimage

On the website of the church of England there is a whole section set aside for experiencing the church on a journey from the richness of the past into the unknown riches of the future. ¹ The website describes a new approach to catechism, teaching the way of the faith as a pilgrimage, being on a journey.

This new Pilgrim catechism – The Pilgrim Way – stands in this great tradition, consciously drawing on all that has gone before. It also offers something new for today’s generation of Christians, helping us to understand and live out our faith and identity as followers of Jesus Christ.

In the Catholic Church, over 50 years ago, Vatican II thought of the church as the light of the world. Christ the one lighting the way and the church as the Sacramental presence of Christ to the world.² If the pilgrim people are to be the light of Christ showing the way forward, we must embrace, "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of (all people)." ³ We the pilgrim people are to be Christ in the world, seeking the way forward into the future which we can only see dimly.

Models of the church

The church as a ship. The church as a pilgrim People. These are not the only metaphors that have been used through the ages. But for me, they are particularly powerful.

The church as a ship was first used in the first and second century in the catacombs. The drawings can be seen still. The church as the people of God is already in the New Testament as we have it.

The word church (ekklesia) appears only two times in the gospels, and we have heard one of those today. The only other use of the word in the gospels is also found in the gospel of Matthew, 2 chapters earlier. Today we hear of the pilgrim people down together, not as a gathering of individuals but as a living body. The earlier reference in Matthew refers to how the church this pilgrim people is in fact founded on a rock foundation.

The word ekklesia was in use centuries before the Christian church appeared on the scene. It referred to an ordinary gathering of citizens, called together to attend to the concerns of their city. In the time the Christian church was forming, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, (Septuagint), the word ekklesia was used to refer to the people of Israel gathered in sacred assembly.

In the acts of the apostles, the word church refers to the followers of the risen Lord, who are gathered in the different cities. The church in Jerusalem. The church in Antioch. And so on.

Paul refers to the church, as gathered in various places. The opening chapters of the revelation of John are addressed to churches in various places. But in every usage of the word in the New Testament, it refers to a gathering of people, not a building

For many of you that may be common place . But of course it doesn't fit our common usage of the word. For us, church is a building, and all the associated fixtures required to maintain a functioning building.

I had a bishop in Northern Indiana who had once been interned in a Japanese camp during World War II. His father was a missionary there as the war broke out and General MacArthur made his famous retreat. At the end of the war his family made its way to where my Bp. Gray's grandfather was then a bishop -- South Bend, IN. In 1945 the Cathedral church of the diocese was St. Paul's in Mishawaka. When I heard the newly elected grandson Bp. Gray tell this story at St. Paul's, Mishawaka, I happened to be living in the old rectory of that church. The grandson Bp. Gray said that when he, as a youngster walked through those doors, having traveled from the Philippines where the only church he had known was the one gathered around his father in an interment camp, -- he said when he walked through those doors of St. Paul's in 1945 it was the first time he experienced "church as a building". Before that, the only thing he had known was church as a gathered people.

Exodus

Our reading today from the book of Exodus continues the narrative from last week. Fr. Peter referred to the "Big Picture." Moses having a conversation with the living God, the creator of the universe. God commanding him to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. God revealing God's name.

Like the core of the Earth itself, these passages feel like a burning core at the center of God's foundational work for the chosen pilgrim people. This week the narrative is advanced as God and Moses put the last pieces of the deliverance in place. It is the event of Passover that all future Passovers refer to. The people slaughter a lamb and the blood from that offering is spread on the lintel and on the gates of the peoples homes. In the very anthropomorphic imagery used by the text, God uses that blood to recognize the homes of his chosen people so that in his work of destroying the first born of Egypt he will be able to pass over the children of Israel. It is both graphic and vivid.

This is the event that gives its name both to the Jewish Passover and to the salvation offering by Jesus on the cross. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. As if in reenactment the roasted lamb meal is repeated at every Seder meal from time immemorial to the unknown generations of the future. So too the Eucharist is celebrated both to recall and to make present the salvation once offered to God's people and the goal of our pilgrimage. Observant Jews remind themselves each time they go in and out of their house where that mezuzzah is posted.

4 שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד׃ 5 וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ 6 וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ׃ 7 וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃ 8 וּקְשַׁרְתָּ֥ם לְא֖וֹת עַל־יָדֶ֑ךָ וְהָי֥וּ לְטֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֥ין עֵינֶֽיךָ׃ v'qesharthem l'voth al-yadeqa v'tayev l'totapheth beyev eyneyqa 9 וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזוּזֹ֥ת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ ס vqethabethem al-mizuzoth beytheqa vbeshareyqa

*Hear, O Israel! The Eternal is our God, the Eternal alone.  You shall love the Eternal your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.  Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.  Impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.  Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.⁴

For generations, for centuries, Christians have celebrated the eucharist for every imaginable reason in order to make the reality of Christ our Passover present and real in the present day. ## Waking up

Today's readings are an opportunity for us to return at least for the moment to a more ancient understanding of the church. We are the pilgrim people who are gathered together on a journey, sailing in a ship, a nave. Our pilgrimage is not just for ourselves but for the whole world.

In an old saying that I've often repeated, "If that's true it's important."" Paul says it's ultimately important.

[It is] now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than whmakeen we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. 

There is no time to lose. This is the Day the Lord has made. This is the Day the Lord has set before you. So now is the time to start rowing, sailing, walking, or just dreaming of the day to come.

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1. https://www.churchofengland.org/our-faith/pilgrim-way/about-pilgrim-way↩

2. Lumen Gentium (light of the nations) "Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so ... is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race...↩

3. Gaudium et spes (Joys and hopes)↩

4. Deuteronomy 6:4-9↩

Proper 15a -- Palm Harbor, FL, August 20, 2023

 

Opening

Have you ever looked back at some event in your life and realized that God's hand had been with you all along? At the time you were certain that things were going bad, and you felt all alone and had no idea how to go forward?

Have you ever spent days or weeks or months or even years asking God to deliver you from something, only to discover that what had once looked like oppression was in fact the instrument of God's deliverance?

Have you ever been hit over the head by what's going on in your life and wondered what could God possibly make of all this? Then just asking the question, you understood what God was doing in your life?

Questions like that swirled around me in 2008. The previous year my family had hosted a young student for half a year of school so that she could attend Kamehameha school in Honolulu. It is one of the premier K-12 schools in Hawaii and is reserved for descendants of indigenous Hawaiians. It didn't work out well with other members of my family, and she had to return to her family on Maui at Christmas time.

Somehow I couldn't get the notion of hosting an exchange student out of my head. I had hosted a student from Brazil in 1988 and 89, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. So in 2008 I pursued it some more. I made an application to receive a student from Lebanon under a program that brought to the U.S. young people from Muslim countries, exposing them to the ways of the United States. In the summer of 2008 I drove to the airport and picked up Leen Al Yaman from Saida, Lebanon.

The last time I preached -- some weeks ago -- I talked a little bit about how there is a three-year cycle of lessons that we hear on Sunday morning. In the year 2008 we were reading the same Gospel passages we are hearing this year. The Sunday that year when today’s gospel was read was the first day that I took Leen Al Yaman to church. She was from the town of Saida -- in biblical times it was known as Sidon (of "Tyre and Sidon"). We have heard today about Jesus going away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. There he met a woman desperately seeking help for her daughter. She pleaded with Jesus to cure her, even at a great distance. One thing is especially interesting about this passage. Here is a woman who argues with Jesus and he decides that she's right. She didn’t back down when Jesus said no.

Whoa! That's not what we would have expected of Jesus. In a situation, and with a person that seemed totally unlikely, God acted decisively for healing and for good.

Now that morning in 2008, in my sermon, I made the claim that I heard God putting his stamp of approval on this young lady who had come to live with my family for a year. She was Muslim, and sometimes she had difficulty with our language and customs, but she was completely embraced by our faith community. She read the Quran that year for the first time in her life. She taught us about Middle Eastern cooking. She made a special dish for our regional community celebration of a Seder meal at Passover. There were about 150 in attendance that year. She danced a belly dance down the aisle of Saint Andrew's Cathedral, on the occasion of her and my daughter's graduation from the Priory school for girls.

God blessed her that year, and I first began to recognize it in that sermon on today's gospel.

It has become a conviction of mine, that God generally acts in our lives in ways that we least expect it. In my case it was a young lady, a Muslim, from the land of Tyre and Sidon.

I am grateful for Fr. Agostino's preaching last week as he spoke eloquently about Joseph the son of Jacob. A most unlikely person for God to make the lynchpin for the survival of God's chosen people. In a previous sermon I mentioned how I regard the Old Testament as an important part of our reading of the Bible. He said something that really caught my attention. "God always takes the initiative." He pointed to an important theme in the books of the Torah, namely providing an explanation for the origin of various names and customs that were a part of the life of Israel 3,000 years ago. I use the word Torah to refer to the 1st 5 books of the Bible -- the word torah has other meanings as well). The Joseph saga is, at least in part, intended to give an explanation for why it is that the people of Israel, at one point in their early history, emerged from Egypt, of all places.

Again and again the Bible catches us by surprise (remember how God works).

The hand of God is seen in the choosing of the people Israel. God was in charge through all the wandering, misfires, and exceptional happenings. Joseph is a dreamer. He dreams dreams and the world around him changes. As the Torah was being recited through the generations and then finally written down, the people remembered that they had come from Egypt. They told the story of Joseph to explain how they got to Egypt in the first place. God took them there.

As the people looked back, lo and behold, they could see God's hand at work. It was true for ancient Israel and it is true for us.

Experience with narrative Bible study

For nearly 30 years of my ministry, I was involved with a variety of groups that met weekly for a particular kind of Bible study called African Bible Study. I read somewhere that a similar method had developed at about the same time in Latin America. It is also basically the same practice that the church has used from ancient times, known as lectio divina. Somebody suggested it's more like Bible sharing than what we customarily call Bible study.

In any case, the method that I have used is basically a matter of reading a text from the bible three times. - The first time each person responds to the question: "What stands out in the passage?" - The second time each person responds to the question: "What is God telling me in this passage?" - And the third time, the question is: "What does God want me to do or change as a result of what God has spoken to me?"

Now I have participated in this method many hundreds of times. I used to say that every time one or more persons heard God speak. And indeed lives were changed, sometimes profoundly, sometimes just in ways that a person could get through the next few days with some kind of equanimity. I've stopped emphasizing that God spoke every time because I am very cautious about making universal statements. There are, after all, pretty much always exception, whenever we say something is always the case. But you get the point.

What is God telling us in scripture today?

One thing comes through for me. And that is that our experience and expectations of God are too small for the reality, the majesty, and the mystery of God.

Reading the Bible

One person wrote recently about reading the Bible:

[It] can be as gentle as a watercolor and as powerful as a thunderstorm. It can be taken literally or taken seriously but not always both. It's a library written over centuries, containing poetry and metaphor as well as history and biography, and without discernment, it makes little sense. It has to be, must be, read through the prism of empathy and the human condition.¹

Even more to my point is a book I first read in the 1990's. I quickly accepted the author's argument that we Christians don't follow and put our trust in a big enough God.

The title of the book was, naturally enough, A Big Enough God. The God of the Bible is both majestic and personal. When we expect God to be so majestic as to be out of reach, we end up expecting a God too small to be significant. When we make God all about our very limited perspective in a universe of quasars and quarks, we end up awaiting a God too petty to be God.

"God is not careful, is not bound by the rules. God is careless, profligate even. The imagination of God is outrageous."

That just seems manifestly true to me. Otherwise God is not the God who created the universe and all that is. Consider this passage from Annie Dillard in another classic work titled Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She describes God's creativity this way:

You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold soil, lock up solar energy and give off oxygen. Wouldn't it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? ... But look what happens ... Look at practically anything — the coot’s feet, the mantis’ face, a banana, the human ear -- and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He'll stop at nothing. There is no-one standing over evolution with a blue pencil to say, ‘Now that one there is absolutely ridiculous and I won't have it.’ ... Is our taste so much better than the creator’s? The creator creates. Does he stoop, does he speak, does he save, succour, prevail? Maybe. But he creates. He creates everything and anything.”

Ending

When we listen attentively to what God is speaking to us -- you just never know what might happen. It's an amazing and a wondrous journey. And in the end we will be able to look back and recognize that God's hand has been in all of it.

Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of Jesus most holy life.

Amen.

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1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/12/opinions/priest-conversion-lgbt-rights-coren/index.html↩

My other Blogs

St. Paul's, Monroe, NC 

In 2021 and 2022 I was an interim at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Monroe, NC. For that ministry I wrote some regular essays intended to be general formation pieces for the congregation. These can be found at:

General Religion - Church essays

Some earlier writings

Here are a few miscellaneous pieces, including a couple of personal items. I'm at an age now where I am not looking to keep very many things private; so if any are interested, you're welcome to read.

Earlier writings and sermons